


Lazarus Rising

by gabrielstolethetardis



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Future Fic, Hell Fic, Hell Flashbacks, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-25
Updated: 2015-06-29
Packaged: 2018-03-25 15:53:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3816217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gabrielstolethetardis/pseuds/gabrielstolethetardis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel has always kept hidden what really happened when he broke Dean out of Hell, and now that Dean's gone, he decides to write it all down: the story of he fell in love with Dean Winchester, and then Dean forgot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Word of God

**Author's Note:**

> *Season 10 spoilers*  
> I originally wrote this in the timeline when Dean disappeared when he was a demon, but due to current events and my prediction for the end of season 10, the timeline is currently fluent. Try not to think about it too much ;)

I bite my pencil eraser, the bitter taste filling my mouth as I stare at the leather-bound notebook sitting on the table in front of me. Already, there are ten pages missing from the book, crumpled up and scattered on the floor around me. I’ve never been much of a writer—Chuck and Metatron were always the literary ones—but this is something I’ve been meaning to do ever since Dean Winchester forgot.

That sentence sounds good in my head, but once it’s scratched down on paper it loses its appeal, so I rip out yet another page and ball it up in frustration.

It would be easier to simply say it all aloud, but I’ve waited too long, and now it’s too late. Dean Winchester is gone, and everything we might’ve had is gone with him. The thought makes me want to break down, so I focus on the blank paper in front of me. I need to do this, otherwise I will always feel empty inside, the guilt of repressed secrets weighing down on me like it has been for years.

“Think!” I mutter to myself, thankful I am alone so nobody can witness my slow descent into madness. “What would Chuck do?”

Of course, I can never measure up to Chuck’s standards—after all, how can one rival God, even if one is His son? For a moment, I’m weighed with more sadness—that I’d let my Father slip through my fingers just when I needed His help the most—and then my pencil is snapping in half in my fingers and the pain of splinters digging into the tips of my fingers is enough to jerk me back to reality.

I carefully pick the wood shavings out of my flesh and stand up, crossing the motel room to the bathroom where I wash the cuts, which are clean and will heal quickly. That’s something I’ve learned to cope with as a human.

I stand by the sink a few moments longer than necessary, feeling the icy water run through my fingers. A shiver goes through my body, but it isn’t entirely attributed to the coldness of the water—I’ve found that when I get emotional, I begin to tremble. My legs begin to quiver, and I quickly turn the water off and find my way back to the desk before they can give out beneath me. My breathing is slightly ragged, and I take slow, cleansing breaths to relieve some of the tension building in my chest. If I’m going to write anything, I have to focus, no matter how much my emotions try to get in the way.

I open one of the desk drawers and pull out a new pencil, sharpened to a fine point. There are dozens more where it came from; I didn’t know how much I would be writing, so I prepared all I had. I can spend years describing my time with Dean, filling thousands of pages simply with the way I felt when I was with him, or I can fit it all into a paragraph, a sentence, a few words.

And eventually, after hours of staring intently at the blank lines in front of me, that’s how it starts: with a few words.

* * *

 

It was a Tuesday when I heard the command, passed down directly from God through a chain of angels until it reached me. To this day, I don’t know why He chose me to save Dean Winchester; there were many other angels who would have been far more qualified for the job. However, a command from God could not be ignored, so without a second thought I sought out one of Hell’s hidden entrances.

Getting in was relatively simple. The reaper guarding the gate was quick to let me pass, watching me with wide eyes as I stepped through the doorway. I suppose an angel entering the land of demons was a sight to be seen, but at the time I paid him no second thought as the door closed behind me, sealing me inside the fiery labyrinth that was Hell.

I’d heard stories of Lucifer’s home, dark tales whispered when there was no one around to hear, but had never been there myself. Nothing could have prepared me for what Hell really was like—the tortured human souls screaming and begging for clemency, dark, twisted shadows looming around every corner with hands that grabbed at you and tried to pull you through the walls, and everywhere the smell of despair, almost tangible upon my tongue. I’d never felt anything before, but in that moment, the feeling rushing through my system must have been fear, flooding me like an ice-cold wave of water and chilling me down to the bottoms of my feet.

Searching for Dean Winchester, one soul among billions, took weeks. Each day, I felt my apprehension build, worried that I would be stuck wandering the red-washed halls of Hell forever, the cries of the tormented ringing in my ears and the temperature alternating between boiling hot and numbingly cold. I smote demon after demon, so many I lost count, all the while looking for the man who was so important that God had commanded his resurrection.

The day I found him, I had almost given up. I could feel my grace weakening with every moment more I spent in Hell, my angelic powers becoming increasingly limited. I’d spent so much time among the screams of the damned and peering around every corner that disappointing God seemed like a reasonable option, but it was the words of a demon that finally led me to Dean.

“Wait!” he cried as I prepared to smite him. My hand stilled inches away from his sweat-beaded forehead, and he continued, “I know a Dean Winchester.”

My grip on his arm tightened. “Tell me,” I demanded, eyes flashing.

“He’s with Alastair, down in the last circle of Hell—just short of the cage,” the demon said, his lips curling upwards slightly despite his situation. “Rumor has it he finally caved.”

I should’ve disposed of him then, since I’d gotten the information I needed, but I couldn’t help but ask, “Caved?”

The demon sneered, his black eyes glittering. “Alastair’s been offering him a deal since day one: Dean can get out from under the whip if he agrees to take it up himself. I guess the famous Dean Winchester isn’t as strong as he says he is, because apparently he took up Alastair’s offer.” The demon let out a short, clipped laugh. “After only thirty years.”

I had heard enough, and with a bright flash of light the demon’s vessel crumpled to the rock floor, eyes smoking. With some effort, I transported myself to what the demon had called the ‘last circle of Hell’, landing in the shadows with a tired rustle of feathers.

The hairs on my arms stood on end as my skin met the coldest air I’d ever felt. If I had been human, I would have died within minutes, but even to an angel the temperature was extremely uncomfortable. The area was still bathed in red, but now there were greens and purples thrown into the mix, and everywhere along the walls there hung strings that resembled thick, sticky spider-webs. While the other circles had been filled with the sounds of millions of souls begging and crying out for help, this one resonated with an immense whooshing sound and an underlying whine that pierced through my eardrums and made me grit my teeth. Mixed in with the white noise were the singular cries of one soul, and I could hear their pleas and screams much clearer than I wanted to.

Cautiously, I edged down the hall towards the sobs, and just before I turned the corner I shielded myself so I would be invisible to demons and souls alike. Then, I stepped into a massive open-ceilinged cavern that was crisscrossed with the spider-web-like strings, vibrating in a non-existent wind. In the center of the large space, bound by hands and feet in the webs, was a man who was bloody beyond recognition, and another man loomed over him, a long, wicked blade clenched tightly in his hand. As I watched, the man drove the tip of the blade into the trapped man’s stomach, twisting slowly as the other man screamed and pleaded with him, tears dripping from his empty eye sockets.

A demon stood by the man with the knife, watching the scene with a look that I could only describe as critical. “All right, Dean,” he said after a moment. “Let’s try something a bit different now. This just isn’t satisfying me.”

I suppose I must not have put much thought into the previous demon’s statement that Dean had, as he put it, ‘taken up the whip himself’, because when the man withdrew his blade from the bound man’s stomach and responded to the demon—who must have been Alastair—with a gruff, “What do you suggest?” my eyes widened and I took a step back.

I’d ventured into Hell with every possible situation in mind, a way to break Dean out for each one, but never once had I considered that I would be rescuing the torturer instead of the tortured. It seemed impossible to me that a man God deemed worthy of saving would be capable of such an awful deed.

I stared at the two of them a moment longer, a reputedly good man and a demon standing side-by-side, working together, before advancing. It wasn’t until I was a few feet away from Dean and Alastair that I removed my shield, grabbing hold of Dean’s arm with one hand and watching Alastair’s surprised face disappear as I quickly transported the both of us to an isolated corner of Hell, far away from the cavern.

We’d barely landed when Dean tore his arm out of my grip and whirled on me, knife still in hand. “Stay back,” he warned, pointing the blade at me. “Don’t touch me!”

“I hardly see the need for your hostility,” I began, taking a step closer to Dean. Faster than I thought possible for a human, he darted forward and sank the knife deep into my chest, retreating and watching with wide eyes as I reached down and pulled the blade out from my flesh, letting it clatter onto the uneven ground. “Considering I’ve just rescued you from damnation.”

“What the hell are you?” Dean said, his eyes wide like a startled deer’s.

“I am an angel of the Lord.”

“There’s no such thing,” Dean said, eyes flicking down to the knife laying at my feet. “So I’m gonna say it again: I know you’re not a demon because no demon would be dumb enough to snatch me from under Alastair’s nose, so _what are you_?”

I decided that if Dean wasn’t going to listen, it would be best to simply show him the truth, so I shrugged off my trench coat and extended my wings through the slits in my starched dress shirt. They had been folded up and compacted beneath the tan material, but now they stretched across the whole length of the hall, pressing rather uncomfortably against the confines of the enclosed space. Dean watched them in silent shock until I retracted them quickly, feeling slightly exposed at showing off that which no human had ever seen before, and pulling my trench coat back on over my wings despite the intense heat.

“Do you believe me now, Dean Winchester?” I asked, locking eyes with Dean. His were a bright green, the color of moss and green glass bottles and emeralds sparkling in the sunlight, and at the moment they were wide with disbelief. He blinked a couple of times, long lashes brushing his cheeks for the briefest of moments, before clearing his throat.

“All right,” he said, eyeing me warily. “What’s an angel doing in Hell?”

“I was sent here to rescue you.”

Dean’s forehead creased, and he looked at me skeptically. “Me? Listen, um…”

“Castiel,” I supplied.

“Castiel,” he repeated. “No offence, but I don’t believe that.”

I cocked my head slightly to one side. “You don’t?” What was so hard to comprehend?

Dean glanced around him, and seemed to shiver slightly. “There’s a reason I’m down here, okay? And not just because I sold my soul. I probably would have ended up here anyway, just later rather than sooner. I’m not exactly the kind of person angels jump through hoops to save from damnation.”

I frowned. “There were no hoops involved, Dean.”

Dean gave me a strange look. “It’s an expression,” he said slowly.

“Oh.” I added the phrase to the list of things I didn’t understand about humans before continuing, “Well, since God has chosen to have you raised from perdition, apparently you are worth, as you say, ‘jumping through hoops’ for.”

“ _God?_ ” Dean repeated, eyes narrowing. “You’re telling me _God,_ as in the-man-upstairs God, is the one who wants me out of here?”

“I’m glad to hear that you understand.” I crouched down and picked the blood-soaked blade off of the stone floor and extended it hilt-first to Dean. “Shall we go?”

Dean regarded the knife warily, before reaching for it. However, his hand stilled just short of the hilt, fingers brushing against the worn leather, and his eyes connected with mine. “One more question,” he said, eyes flashing. “How do I know that I can trust you?”

I considered this for a moment. Besides the word of God? “You don’t,” I replied, matching the resolution in Dean’s eyes in my own. “You will have to choose to trust me.”

Dean hesitated one more moment. Then, his jaw tightened, and his hand closed on the hilt. “Let’s go,” he said, and for the first time, I saw in Dean Winchester what God must have when he ordered his retrieval: faith and loyalty worthy of that of a righteous man.

* * *

 

I stare down at the words in front of me, feeling a sick, wrenching in my gut. This isn’t coming out right at all. The words are all wrong, sentences haphazardly thrown together with either too much detail or not enough. Worst of all, I’m having trouble with us—Dean and I. No matter how hard I try, I can’t get the _feelings_ right. Maybe it’s because, at the time, I had none.

In a bout of frustration, I rip out all of the pages and crumple them tightly in my hands. However, just before I move to throw them out, my hand stills mid-motion and I stare at it for a moment, studying the bits of paper poking out through my fingers with a sort of detachedness. Then, with a sigh, my fingers open and the paper falls onto the desk, where I smooth it back out and use Scotch tape to secure it back into the notebook. The pencil is slightly smudged, but otherwise, the words are unharmed.

I can’t let it go. No matter how wrong the story comes out on paper, it needs to be done. I have to remember everything—every small smile of Dean’s, or the millions of moments when the shell I’d hidden behind slowly cracked apart—even if I can’t quite write it all down.

My pencil is dull, so I put the point into the electric sharpener I purchased at an Office Max the week prior. It’s getting late in the day, the setting sun casting long shadows across the drab room, and I take a moment to stretch my legs as I walk over to the large window and stare out over the city.

Lawrence really is a quiet town. Most people are already in their houses, eating dinner or watching television, and only a few are still milling about the streets, some with dogs, others weaving around parked cars with their bicycles. Watching the Winchesters’ hometown, I can almost forget the tragedy that happened here, the event that set Sam and Dean on the path to becoming hunters.

If there were a way to do it all over again, would I stop Azazel? The question worms its way into my mind, and I immediately wish that it hadn’t, because I don’t want to have to decide. How could I choose between Dean having a normal life, with a family and friends and a heart free of the pain that weighed it down for years, and the path that led him to me?

I look away from the urban landscape, my own heart heavy with grief, and return to my notebook. I grip the newly sharpened pencil in my trembling hand and set the tip to the paper. It doesn’t matter what I would choose; I can’t change the past, no matter how much I yearn to try.

So, in the light of the fading sun, I settle with recording it.

 


	2. The Last of the Grace

I should have known it would never be as easy escaping from Hell as it was breaking into it. As are most prisons, it is designed to keep people in, not so much as to prevent outsiders from finding their way inside, even if that someone is an angel. In fact, Hell is what the garrison likes to call, ‘angel-proof’, in the fact that any angel who enters the devil’s land feels their grace slowly slip away bit by bit the more time they spend within its walls. I’d never believed that to be true, but as I crept through the bowels of Hell with Dean Winchester at my side, feeling my power leach out of me with every step, I was definitely reconsidering its validity.

“So,” Dean said, breaking the stifling silence that had resided between the two of us for the past half an hour. “Castiel.” He paused a moment, as if considering. “Do you mind if I call you ‘Cas?’”

I frowned slightly. “If you wish.”

“It’s probably stupid to even think you know this, but what the hell.” Dean looked around him warily, as if the use of the word ‘hell’ in the very place would send the walls crumbling down on top of us, before continuing, “My brother, Sam? Do you know if he’s all right?” He twirled the knife through his fingers absently. “I mean, still alive and not making any deals with demons to try and get me back.”

I peered around another corner, making sure the coast was clear before continuing forward. “I’m sorry, Dean,” I said, not knowing what being _sorry_ felt like but saying the words because they seemed to make humans feel better. “I do not know anything about your brother. My orders were to retrieve you and nothing else.” Of course, these were lies. Every angel in the garrison knew everything there was to know about the Winchester brothers. Dean, who was Michael’s sword, and Sam, who was to be Lucifer’s vessel—brothers who had been carefully planned for. That was why it was so important to get Dean out of Hell—even _if_ the green-eyed man had already broken the first seal by taking up Alastair’s offer, setting the apocalypse in motion.

Dean was quiet for a moment, so long that I paused and turned around to make sure he was still behind me. His eyes were trained on the ground, the knife still in his fingers. “Yeah,” he mumbled, glancing up at me with a face carefully masked so as to not show emotion. “I didn’t think that you would.”

I wasn’t sure what I should say next, but I was spared a response when Dean’s eyes locked on something behind me, widening in surprise. Before I could turn around, Dean’s knife whipped past my ear, so close I could feel the breeze, and there was a yell followed closely by a thud.

I spun just in time to see the black sizzle out of the demon’s eyes, the knife embedded in the center of her forehead. I remained rooted to the spot in shock as Dean brushed past me and pulled the blade out of her head in one movement, cleaning the blood off on her shirt deftly, before turning to face me. His jaw was tight, his eyes cold with something almost demonic, and for a brief moment, I found myself afraid of the man I was charged to rescue.

Then, he seemed to snap out of some sort of trance, and he gave me a half smile I would come to recognize as uniquely his. “I’m not sure how much the big man told you about who I am, but up there—“ He pointed upwards, as if Earth were actually above his head, “—getting rid of monsters like that is my job.”

“I am aware that you and your brother are hunters,” I said carefully. My orders, given to me by a higher-up angel in the moments before I departed from heaven, were to have Dean know as little as possible about why he was being resurrected or the angels’ knowledge of him and Sam. “Tell him nothing,” the angel had warned, adjusting something on his desk that hardly needed fixing, “or we will take matters into our own hands. Can you do that, Castiel?”

I’d nodded, not knowing what ‘take matters into our own hands’ meant but not wanting to find out, so now I finished cautiously, “Dean and Sam Winchester, sons of John and Mary Winchester. Your mother perished at the hand of Azazel when you were young, and your father sold his soul to save you from death.”

Dean’s smile twitched. “I guess it runs in the family,” he said, voice thick with something I now know was bitter irony.

I didn’t think heredity had anything to do with it, but instead of mentioning this—I felt it would be met with another strange look—I suggested that we continue on. Dean, who was probably eager to leave the fiery pits of damnation, agreed, and we resumed creeping through the halls of Hell. I would have preferred to simply fly us to one of the rips in the fabric between Hell and Earth, but I’d never felt this drained of power before in my existence, and I didn’t want to risk running out in a situation where I would need to use my angelic powers for protection. I could only hope that we would make good time through the many circles of Hell; I could tell that Dean was getting anxious, the constant screaming and the intense heat obviously affecting him twice as much as it did me.

“Are you sure that you know where you’re going?” Dean said suddenly, and I sighed.

“This is your problem, Dean,” I said, taking my eyes away from the hallway for a moment to look at Dean. Sweat dripped off of his forehead, but his eyes were focused, his feet sure as we continued to creep along stealthily. “You have no faith.”

“I trusted you, didn’t I?” Dean gave me a sly smile, his eyebrows lifting slightly. “I’d say that counts as faith.”

“That is not—“ I began, but before I could finish Dean tensed all at once, shouting, “Look out!” and I felt cold steel press against my jugular, followed by a terse, “Don’t move, either of you.”

Demons melted out of the shadows, flooding the hallway until there were at least fifteen of them surrounding us, eyes pitch black and glittering with amusement. The one holding the knife to my throat chuckled, the vibrations of her laughter resonating through my own body as her stomach pressed uncomfortably against my back. “Now what do we have here?” she teased, her red hair tickling against my neck as she ducked her head by mine so she could look me in the eye. “An angel and Dean Winchester, on the loose in Hell. We can’t have that, now, can we?”

“That knife’s not going to do you any good,” I said. “It can’t kill me.”

The redhead cocked her head. “Oh really?” She pressed the blade deeper into my flesh, and blood began to run down my neck, thick and red and hot. “Well, I imagine if I cut off your head it might slow you down just a bit, no?”

I said nothing. Dean, who had been restrained by a couple of thug-like demons and confiscated of his weapon, struggled against his handlers. “No!” he cried, eyes flashing, but there was nothing he could do. They couldn’t kill him—he was already dead—but I was certainly a viable candidate, and as the muscles in the redhead’s arm tensed, I knew I was moments away from failing God. I couldn’t let that happen.

I closed my eyes, collecting together all of my remaining grace in preparation for what I was about to do. I started to shake, my vessel feeling claustrophobic suddenly, and I knew I couldn’t hold it in much longer.

“Wait,” the redhead said, and the knife stilled for a moment. “What are you—?”

I had enough time to shout, “Close your eyes, Dean!” before I exploded, my vessel vaporizing instantly as my true form expanded, blasting through stone walls and reaching up and up and up as it burned through everything evil, purifying everything it touched until I reached my full height, standing in a newly-formed cavern with the bodies of hundreds of demons scattered around my feet, their eyes smoking and mouths twisted into various grotesque expressions. Dean knelt among them, hands pressed over his eyes, and I found myself seized with terror, that I’d blinded him, or that the evil within him outweighed the good and I’d burned him beyond repair.

Suddenly, I crumpled, folding smaller and smaller and smaller, and I had just enough time to direct my energy into one of the empty vessels littered on the ground and repair it before the last of my grace burned up, leaving me feeling empty inside like I never had before.

I blinked open unfamiliar eyes and gasped, sitting up with a jolt and then wishing that I hadn’t as my head throbbed painfully. I reached up to heal myself, and then felt another pang in my chest as I realized it wasn’t going to be that easy anymore.

I was now simply, painfully human, and even though both Dean and I were still alive and demons lay dead across the floor in a thirty-foot radius around us, I felt as though I had failed. I rested my forehead on my knees and let out a sigh, emotions assaulting me in waves. Dismay that I’d lost my grace, shame that I’d failed at a mission that was supposed to be cut-and-dry, and hopelessness, because I didn’t know how we were going to get ourselves out of this mess.

“Cas?”

I raised my head to see Dean standing over me, his expression guarded. “Is that you?”

I glanced down at my new vessel. He had strawberry-blonde hair and was wearing acid-washed skinny jeans, red Vans, and a black biker jacket over a tight white shirt that showed off impressive abs—my abs now. He wasn’t a vessel anymore; this man was me. “Yes,” I said, taking this all in within a couple of seconds. “It’s me.”

I stood up, and stumbled immediately. Dean reached out and caught me before I could hit the ground, his muscles straining as he tried to support my weight. “Whoa, there, Cas,” he said, easing me down to the ground again. “Just chill for a moment, okay?”

I shook my head, attempting to stand again. “We have to leave,” I insisted, managing to stay on my feet this time despite Dean’s protests that I should ‘take it easy’. “More demons will be here any second. I only bought us a couple of minutes.”

“You can barely walk, Cas!” Dean exclaimed as I tried to take a few steps away from the carnage around us and nearly tripped over my own feet. “Listen, I appreciate the effort, okay?”

I turned slightly to face Dean. He ran a hand over the back of his neck, eyes downcast. “You tried to help me, tried to save me, but you couldn’t. It’s okay.” His eyes connected with mine, and I recognized the sadness that shone in his. “Maybe it’s for the best.”

“No, Dean,” I said, shocked that he could even think that he didn’t deserve to be saved. “Think about all those people you saved before you were damned here. They would all have died if you hadn’t been there to help them. You are a good person, and I don’t understand why you can’t just _see_ that.”

“How would you know?” Dean asked bitterly. “You hardly know me.”

I bit my lip, wanting to say all the reasons I knew Dean didn’t deserve to be sentenced to an eternity of torture, but I knew I couldn’t. Looking at Dean’s face, so twisted with self-loathing, I felt something deep inside me that made my stomach twist and my eyes sting with unshed tears: sympathy.

So this was what it felt like to be sorry.

“Hey,” Dean said, and I felt his hand on my shoulder. I looked up into his bright green eyes, so beautiful one could get lost in them forever, and wondered for a moment what he saw in mine. “Are you okay?”

I recognized concern etched onto his face, and again wondered why a man who cared this much about someone he just met could ever think he was worthy of Hell. But then again, I knew that Dean was destined for so much more, while he only knew what he thought his past held.

“Yes,” I lied, only one untruth of many more to come. “I’m fine.”

But as we picked our way through the blanket of smoking demon vessels and slipped away into the shadows, a burnt-out angel-turned-human and a man with broken will, I knew that neither of us was anything close to fine.

* * *

 

I stand in front of the bathroom mirror, carefully shaving away the bristly black hairs that have begun to grow long on my chin. As I slowly become clean-shaven once again, I take a moment to examine this face in the mirror—the face that has been mine for many years, and the only face Dean Winchester knew me by.

My reflection shows messy dark brown hair and clear blue eyes that stare back at me blankly, devoid of emotion at the moment. My trench coat, tie, and suit sit crumpled in the corner by the door, awaiting the moment when I decide to leave the motel. For now, I am wearing a white dress shirt, wrinkled from many days of wear, and black dress pants. Despite everything, I have not been able to give up the formal wear, no matter how hot the temperatures rose to or how much the clothing reminded me of all the times I spent with Dean.

For a moment, I remember a different face, one with brown eyes and blonde hair and those acid wash skinny jeans, with Dean’s hands in the back pockets as he pulls me in for a kiss—

My hand slips, and then blood is rushing down my face and I curse, washing the white foam off of my chin and pressing a tissue to the cut as I search for a Band-Aid.

The pain of the shaving nick is nothing compared to the agony that squeezes my heart at the thought of Dean’s lips on mine. It had felt so perfect, like everything else could be wrong but if Dean and I had each other nothing else would matter. Everything had started to seem as if it would be all right, and then…

I locate a Band-Aid and stick it over my cut. It’s small and shallow, quickly healing. However, the throbbing left in my chest from my memories of Dean and me will not heal as fast. Writing our time in Hell has opened up a jar of emotions that ravage me with every word, making it hard to concentrate on necessary details. Of course, nobody is going to read it, so I shouldn’t be so worried about how it sounds, but somehow I can’t stop telling myself that maybe, just maybe, Dean will come back to me and I can give him the completed manuscript and we can read it together and then he can realize just how much I love him and how much I’ve missed him.

I’m so tired, but my thoughts keep me awake as I lie in bed and try to fall asleep. I keep looking over at my desk, with my notebook still lying open at the page where I left off. I want to keep writing; despite the pain it causes me, having to describe all the events in order and think carefully about the words that I’m putting down means I can almost relive my time with Dean, no matter how horrible some of it was.

Because so much more of it was absolutely, heartbreakingly perfect.


	3. Hunger

“So let me get this straight,” Dean said, his nose wrinkling slightly as he ran my previous words through his head. “Angels can just pop from vessel to vessel?”

I shook my head. “No. They—we—have to get permission first.” I looked down at myself. “This was an exception. He was already dead.”

“Then why don’t you guys just use dead people all the time?”

“Because often, when deceased, humans do not possess the strength to contain an angel.”

“The strength?” Dean repeated. “Well, that would explain the abs.”

“What?” I frowned slightly. “Muscular strength is not relevant in this case. It is the strength of the soul that matters.”

Dean’s eyebrows raised. “The soul?”

“Perhaps you are hard of hearing. Yes, the soul. It must be pure enough to handle the angelic energy inside of the body, otherwise it will disintegrate.”

“The angel, or…?”

“The vessel.”

Dean swallowed. “How often does that happen?”

“More often than we would like.” At Dean’s horrified expression, I added, “We do not wish to hurt the humans, but sometimes mistakes are made.”

“Huh,” Dean laughed, and I frowned.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he said, shaking his head. “Just, angels aren’t quite what I expected.”

“What did you expect?”

Dean shrugged. “I dunno, Cas. I didn’t even believe in angels until you showed up, but I guess I always thought they’d have halos and shit, not ‘true forms’ that blind people and the need to possess some poor, unsuspecting person.”

“’Possess’ isn’t really the word I would use,” I said, fiddling with the cuff of my leather jacket. Dean’s suspicion of angels was making me increasingly worried that he would cease to trust me, and all of this would have been for nothing. “We are not like demons; we cannot just take what we want.”

“Yeah, yeah, you have to ask for permission.” Dean sounded mildly disgusted, so I decided to attempt to divert the topic from angels. He’d been bouncing questions off of me for the past hour or so, and I’d answered as many of them as I could: mainly, explaining what had happened with the demons when I’d expended the last of my grace. I told him about true forms and grace and vessels, giving him all the truths of the spectacle except one: my newly acquired humanity.

Perhaps I feared that I would lose his trust if he knew I wasn’t an angel anymore, or maybe I was afraid that saying the fact aloud would make it that much more real, but I couldn’t tell Dean the whole truth. My emotions had settled down after the initial rush of them, and I was beginning to feel more like myself again, but the skittishness that Hell instilled in me refused to fade. Hopefully, we would find a doorway to Earth quickly, my grace would be restored, and everything would return to normal.

“Is there anything you need, Dean?” I asked, jerking the conversation roughly away from the angel interrogation. The question sounded flat to my ears, devoid of actual concern; despite the emotions that now emerged occasionally, zapping my body with shocks entirely unfamiliar to me, I wasn’t sure how to use them. They sat dormant inside me, awaiting some unseen signal to flood my senses with feeling. I supposed the less I used them, the easier it would be to forget about how it felt to have them when I became an angel again and my mind became numb to such human things.

Dean put his hand on the knife attached to his side. On closer inspection, small symbols that spoke of death and damnation could be seen etched into the silver blade, radiating with a power akin to that of an angel blade except darker, chilling me down to my bones. “I’ve got everything I need right here, thanks,” he said, tapping the hilt once and letting his fingers linger on the leather for a moment before retracting his hand. “Being dead and all, I don’t really eat and sleep anymore.”

The way Dean said the word _dead_ , as if it didn’t matter that his heart ceased to beat in his chest and his breaths were useless, simply a force of habit from years of necessity, made my stomach twist with a feeling I recognized and had come to think of as my strongest emotion: sympathy. I didn’t know if all humans put as much meaning behind the words ‘I’m sorry’ as they acted, but whoever Castiel the Human was, he certainly did.

However, as soon as the emotion came it was gone, buried deep within me again like I was comfortable and familiar with. So, without any indication of my previous feelings, I simply nodded and focused on finding our way through the labyrinth of halls that made up the bowels of Hell. They were all starting to run together, each cell door set into the wall with prisoners screaming and rattling their chains behind them looking the same. People pressed up against the bars, sticking their skinny arms through and begging us for help, swearing that their sins didn’t warrant this punishment. I set my jaw and ignored their pleas, walking past murderers and criminals and some who simply bit off more than they could chew and ended up under a hellhound’s claws after ten years. Of course they deserved it; those who didn’t were either in Heaven, enjoying an eternal life in their own personal paradise, or walking next to me with silent footsteps and wary, skittish eyes that constantly scanned our surroundings for demons.

I’d explained to Dean as best I could without giving away my human state that I was, as I put it, ‘running low’ on grace, and he’d simply spun his knife through his fingers and given me a wolfish grin. “Don’t worry, Cas,” he’d said, winking at me. “I’ll protect you.”

Now, I wonder if that was the beginning of a long chain of lingering stares when I thought that Dean wasn’t looking, brushings of arms and shoulders that weren’t entirely accidental, and words that said everything except the three I actually wanted to say, the three words I couldn’t utter. Of course, at the time I didn’t know what love felt like, only that Dean Winchester was so much different than anyone else I’d ever met. It was in the way that he smiled, like there was a joke only he understood and the rest of us could never possibly understand, and the way that he got when he fought, like a part of him hardened into a machine that could kill without thought, driving that evil knife into countless demons’ ribcages, before the thrill of the struggle left him all at once and he was Dean again, except he always was and this was just a different part of him, like layers stacked one atop another, making up the man that stood in front of me with that cocky smile and glittering emerald eyes.

But at that moment, sneaking through the cellblocks in Hell, I wasn’t thinking about Dean’s layers, or his smile, or even about him at all. I was thinking about the slow-building discomfort in my stomach, like a hand squeezing my organs with a tight-fingered fist. By each passing hour, the pressure increased, until I found myself stopped mid-step, both hands pressed to my stomach as all the pressure released at once in a deep rumble that left my body feeling uncomfortably hollow, like all my insides had been scooped out.

Dean, hearing the noise, turned around with an odd expression on his face. “Are you OK, Cas?” he asked, retracing a few steps to stand by my side.

“No,” I managed, feeling the pressure already starting to build up again. “I think there is something wrong with me. There is an uncomfortable pain in my stomach, followed by a strange rumbling noise.” I looked up at Dean with wide eyes, barely suppressing a bout of terror that threatened to overcome me. “I think I am ill.” I’d forgotten how easily humans fell susceptible to the elements, contracting various ailments or injuring themselves fatally. They died so easily, thousands everyday, but it only occurred to me now that, as a human, I was now just as prone to death as them.

My stomach made the strange rumbling noise again, and I closed my eyes. “I am dying, Dean,” I said in all seriousness, and prepared myself for the sympathetic words that were sure to come soon. Humans seemed to like that sort of thing.

Laughter rang through the hall, cutting through the constant sounds of pain and suffering, and I opened my eyes, wondering what Dean found amusing about my situation. He had his head tilted back towards the low-hanging ceiling, his shoulders shaking as chuckles overtook his body. “You’re not _dying_ , Cas,” Dean laughed, his words slightly out-of-breath. “You’re hungry.”

I frowned. “Hungry?”

“You just need to eat something,” Dean explained, finally composing himself enough to study me seriously again. “Jesus, why didn’t you _say_ you were hungry? We could’ve stopped.”

“I am Castiel,” I reminded Dean. “Jesus was my half-brother. It’s a common mix-up.”

Dean’s mouth quirked upwards. “Is it, now?” He seemed to find something highly amusing about the whole situation, though I couldn’t understand the humorous aspect of it. “Well, _Castiel_ , why don’t we stop for a moment so you can eat.”

We both faltered then as the realization struck us that there was, in fact, no food in the possession of either of us. I turned out my pockets, just to be sure, but came up empty.

“Shit,” Dean said after a moment of silence. He looked defeated all of a sudden, the face of a man who couldn’t think of a way out, and for some reason I couldn’t stand for him to look so depressed, so I shrugged my shoulders dismissively.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said, attempting to project an aura of nonchalance. “I can wait.”

“Until we escape Hell?” Dean demanded, the defeat making way for fiery determination. “That could be weeks from now, Cas, maybe even months! We don’t know how long it’s going to take us to get out of here, however the hell we’re planning on doing that, and without food or water you won’t last a _week_.” His eyes softened slightly, and he continued, “You made it this far, busting your ass to save me and using the last of your grace to do it. I’ll be damned if I don’t help you get out of here alive.” He paused. “Well, I guess I’m already damned, but you know what I mean.”

I hadn’t realized until that moment just how much Dean cared about me. I was charged to protect him by God Himself, but Dean _chose_ to protect me, and that made my stomach contract in a way that was entirely different than the hunger pangs. He was so absolutely _human_ , and right then it seemed a good thing. I only realized later that humanity had flaws as well, some of them terrifyingly fatal.

So, I nodded, and after a minute or two of both Dean and I attempting to solve the problem of finding nourishment, I finally came up with a plan.

“It’ll be dangerous,” I warned Dean, feeling the need to advise him of the risks even though I knew he would agree to the plan anyway. It was the human in him, but also the recklessness and the willingness to put himself in harm’s way. From what I knew of his destiny, that could very well be his savior—or it could be his downfall. Either way, he would fight until the end.

Unsurprisingly, Dean lifted his chin, his eyes hard. “Then let’s go.”

And together, we set off towards a place where I knew there would be eternal sustenance, tantalizing to those who stood outside its gates and deadly to those inside, a place no angel had set foot in since the beginning of the Earth, a place so poisoned by sin the very thought of it made me shiver.

The Garden of Eden.

* * *

 

The fridge is depressingly empty, and so, for the first time in weeks, I leave the motel. The receptionist, sitting behind the dark-washed wooden desk in the lobby, calls out to me as I depart, car keys and wallet in hand. “Hey! Castiel… right?”

I nod, forcing a smile onto my face that’s there and gone in a moment. The woman, who’s wearing a cheap plastic name tag that reads “Kristy” in curly-cue letters, doesn’t seem to register that I’d rather not talk to anybody at the moment and continues, “Finally, he emerges! Must be pretty exciting inside that room for you to be cooped up in it all the time.” She flashes me a grin, teeth that off-white color of a person who doesn’t worry enough about their appearance to whiten.

“Yeah,” I mumble. “I keep busy.” I attempt to move past her, my head ducked, but she keeps talking like she doesn’t notice my evasive measures.

“What brings you out today?” she inquires, leaning forward across the desk. It creaks under her weight, years of wear making it unstable like everything else in the motel.

“Just going to get some groceries,” I concede, holding up my wallet as proof. Then, before I can stop myself: “I want to get back quickly so I can keep writing.”

The words are out so fast, and I want to suck them back in. This woman, Kristy, with her bubbly curiosity and prying words, is the last person I want to know what I’ve been up to. A “Do Not Disturb” sign on my doorknob and drawn curtains have kept my activities shielded and private up until now, and I don’t know why I’ve told her about the writing. Maybe I just need somebody to confide in, somebody to keep my mind off of the words scrawled across the journal still sitting open on my desk, awaiting my return. Maybe it can be her.

But then Kristy is gushing about writers and creativity and saying, “I’ve got this cousin, you see, he’s absolutely _fabulous_ at writing—you two should get coffee sometime! I’ll give you his number,” and I know it’s not her.

“I’m sorry, I have to go,” I mumble quickly, cutting her off mid-sentence and taking quick steps out of the lobby and into the fresh air before she can say anything else. The door swings shut on her protests, and I take a moment to breathe in deeply, the crisp October air filling my lungs and raising goose bumps on my exposed flesh, before climbing into the drivers’ seat of the Impala.

I sit there for a moment, the smell of old leather and smoke and something uniquely Winchester flooding my nostrils. I remember the day when I first placed my hands on her steering wheel, running my fingers over the smooth material before looking questioningly at Sam.

“Are you sure about this, Sam?” I asked again, studying his face as he leaned against the side of the Impala with arms crossed. He hardly smiled anymore, not since Dean, and today was no exception. I wasn’t searching for a smile, anyway; I was looking for the pain, the sorrow Sam must have felt at letting me take away the one thing that he had left of his brother. The Impala was just as much Dean as Dean was himself; Dean would have wanted Sam to have it, which was why I shook my head and attempted again to climb out of the car. “I really think that you should be the one to take this—“ I began, but Sam adjusted his position so I was forced back into the drivers’ seat, huffing out a breath.

“No, Cas,” Sam said, his voice insistent. “You need it more than I do.” He took a step back and pushed the door shut, sealing me inside the Impala. “I just wish you didn’t have to go.”

I bit my lip, and without saying anything else, I started the car and drove off, leaving Sam standing alone. I watched him grow smaller and smaller in my rearview mirror until he faded all together, and it was then that I allowed myself to cry.

I jerk myself out of the memory with a gasp, realizing that tears are dripping down my cheeks and splashing onto the black leather. I wipe my eyes with the backs of my hands, sniffling, and start the car. The engine turns and then settles into the guttural purr that has become familiar to me. I clear my throat, wipe my cheeks clear of the last of the salty tears, and leave the motel behind for now.

The trip is short and fleeting, and before I know it I’m sitting back in the parking lot of the motel with brown paper bags sitting on the passenger seat where Sam would have been, Dean behind the wheel as they crisscrossed the country, doing what they did best. I feel, suddenly, like an imposter, the one piece out of place in an otherwise perfect world. I grab the bags and step out of the Impala, shutting the door with a creak and locking it. I can’t risk it getting stolen; having it here is almost like having Dean.

Almost, but not quite.

Kristy is gone when I steal through the lobby, for which I am thankful. I slip into my motel room, breathing in the familiar musty odor that permeates it, and after putting away the groceries and grabbing an apple, I establish myself at my desk again.

I bring the red fruit to my mouth, but my hand stalls just before my teeth piece the skin. Slowly, I bring my hand away from my face and stare at the apple, seeing suddenly not my own reflection in its polished surface but Dean, and he’s grinning at me wolfishly, and I find myself smiling back giddily.

Suddenly, his smile turns devilish and his bright green eyes flash black, and with a cry the apple slips out of my fingers, bouncing off of my leg and hitting the floor before rolling under the desk. I whip around, searching the room for any indication that what I’d just seen was in any way real, but I am blessedly alone.

I rest my head on my desk, breathing heavily, feeling relief tainted with a hint of disappointment rush over me. Relief, that that horrifying version of Dean is simply a figment of my imagination, and disappointment despite that that Dean is still gone.

My head reeling, I do the only thing I can: I submerge myself in writing, the apple under the desk fading from my thoughts as I lose myself once again to the past.


	4. Adam and Eve

When the human Dante wrote the _Divine Comedy_ in 1317 AD, he categorized afterlife into three stages: Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory.  While Dante described Purgatory as a mountain, tiered with the seven deadly sins and representing that all sin is derived from love, Purgatory is actually a forest, dark and endless and filled with the souls of every deceased monster. Also, contrary to Dante’s belief that Purgatory was created from Lucifer’s fall from Heaven as the opposite side of Earth rose into a vast mountain, Purgatory is actually the result of something much, much darker.

Dean squinted at me before glancing at the massive, twisting tree embedded into the stone wall in front of us, starkly out of place compared to the industrial-like hallway. “The garden’s in _there?_ ” he asked, his eyebrows shooting up to his hairline.

I didn’t know what was so hard to understand about that. “Yes,” I clarified, stepping forward and laying my hand on the tree bark. It pressed into the flesh of my palm, digging in painfully as I pushed against the wood, searching for the spot that would unlock the doorway.

“I guess I just envisioned some sort of… I dunno, _gate_ or something,” Dean said. Just then, I felt something give underneath my fingertips, and with a slight _whoosh_ of air a part of the tree slid away to reveal a dark, cavernous opening, through which came a slight breeze that made goosebumps raise on my arms.

“This is not the entrance to Eden,” I said, giving Dean a glance before stepping into the unknown blackness. It swallowed me up, and I heard a faint curse behind me before all sound was lost in the wind, whipping suddenly past my ears with a ferocity that had me staggering. It pushed me down to my knees, buffeting me with a strength I’d only heard about in whispered ghost stories, and in the pitch-black nothing, my heart began to pound rapidly in my chest as I was swept with an overwhelming fear—not for myself, but for Dean. Had I lost him? Had I found the wrong doorway, and we were now trapped in an endless void, a part of Hell that we could never find our way out of? Had I failed God?

Had I failed Dean?

I didn’t realize I’d shut my eyes until the wind stopped abruptly, and I remained frozen for a moment before cracking them open slowly, afraid to be met with more endless darkness. Instead, a smoky-tinted light filled my vision, and I sat up on my knees, previous terror draining from my system as I recognized my surroundings—not from prior experience, but from recognition instilled deep inside me.

Trees, coniferous and deciduous alike, thick enough to obscure the sky. The ground, dirt and leaves and pine needles, not a green growth in sight. Haze, hanging in the air, and gray light from an invisible sun filtering through it in patches. The faint rushing of a river in the distance. I took it all in, climbing to my feet slowly and carefully. Alone, for now; they didn’t know we were here yet, but it wouldn’t be long.

“Cas?”

I whipped around and covered Dean’s mouth with my hand before he could say anything else. He paused mid-step, eyes wide, and I shook my head. “Be very quiet,” I breathed, my words barely discernable. “Once they know that we’re here, there’s nowhere that we can hide. We’ll have to move quickly and quietly. Do you understand?”

Dean nodded, my hand moving with his head, and I removed it from his mouth, feeling the press of his lips on my skin a few moments longer after the contact was gone. Together, we began to creep through the woods, the pine needles on the ground softening our footsteps. I braced myself after every tree, expecting something to leap out at us from the shadows, so when Dean softly said, “What are we hiding from?” my pulse leapt, heart skipping a few beats before calming down again.

“When you kill a monster, where does it go?” I responded in a low tone, answering Dean’s question with another. “Heaven, Hell, or somewhere else entirely?”

Dean looked perplexed. “What does that have to do with anything?” He spoke too loudly, words getting away from him; somewhere in the distance, a branch cracked.

I tensed, preparing myself for whatever was to come. “Because when they die, they come here. Every single vampire and werewolf and shapeshifter soul lives after death in an endless forest, a prison of sorts.” I met Dean’s eyes, saw the confusion melt away into startled understanding, and the hairs on the back of my neck prickled. It wouldn’t be long now. “It’s called Purgatory.”

Suddenly, I found myself knocked backwards abruptly as something dropped with an ear-splitting screech from the trees above us, landing on two feet agilely. Long claws extended where fingernails would have been, and sharp canine teeth poked out from his upper lips, which at the moment were pulled back in a vicious snarl.

“Werewolf,” Dean breathed, and I saw out of the corner of my eye him stand, hand going automatically to the knife at his side. The werewolf’s head snapped towards Dean, his interest in me dissipating, but before he could complete the full turn Dean had lunged forward and plunged his knife hilt-deep into the werewolf’s chest. I barely had time to wonder where monsters killed in their own personal afterlife went if they found themselves killed again before the werewolf, with a long howl of pain, crumpled to the ground, muscles falling slack and claws retracting slightly back into the tips of his fingers. Dean waited a moment longer, the silence seeming overwhelming after the previous commotion, before retracting his knife carefully from the carcass in front of him.

“So, what you’re saying,” Dean said slowly, “is that every _thing_ that hunters have ever killed wanders around in this forest, and they all want to kill us?”

“Yes.” I looked over at the werewolf, but sometime when Dean had been talking it had vanished, leaving only disrupted pine needles in its wake.

“What happened to the whole Garden of Eden plan?” Dean asked critically, narrowing his eyes slightly at me like I’d personally commanded the assault of the inhabitants of Purgatory. His unspoken accusation stirred a painful feeling in my heart, which I quickly pushed aside.

“Like Hell,” I explained carefully, “Purgatory has a center—the very darkest corner of it, the beginning, where everything else spiraled out from. In Hell, it’s Lucifer’s cage; in Purgatory, it’s the Garden of Eden.” I glanced off into the woods, seeing the shadows of the trees elongate as darkness set in, and shivered despite myself. Being human made the fear that much more real.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Dean protested. “We’re talking about _the Garden of Eden_ —as in, the one where Adam and Eve lived immortally until they ate that fruit thing and condemned the human race?”

“Something like that—”

Dean’s knife whipped past my ear, and my sentence cut off with a strangled gasp. Behind me, something let out a pained howl, and I whipped around just in time to see the recipient of Dean’s knife sink to his knees, blood gurgling up out of the corners of his mouth. “Winchester,” he managed, the word garbled. Then, his eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed face-first onto the ground, the very tip of Dean’s knife protruding out between his shoulder blades.

Without speaking, Dean flipped the man over and slid his knife out of his chest with one smooth motion. After wiping the blood off on his victim’s shirt, Dean straightened and, finally, looked at me. His eyes were hard, but beneath their icy exterior, I thought I recognized a spark of fear. “I guess I have enemies,” he said, glancing down at the corpse again—or at least where the corpse had been. Now, only bloody pine needles remained. “But hey, I killed them once, I can do it again, right?” One corner of his mouth curled upwards, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes—an expression that I would come to identify as the one Dean wore when it was either smile or fall apart, and falling apart wasn’t an option.

As it was, at the time, something deep inside of me—the human, taking control—recognized that something in Dean’s expression seemed off. “Dean—“

“What was it you were saying, about the garden?” Dean twirled the blade through his fingers, not meeting my eyes.

Looking back on it, I should have confronted Dean then. I should have made him face the demons inside of him, both the ones that crept in during his time in Hell and the ones that had always been there.

There were a lot of things that I should have done.

Instead, I nodded and began to walk again, Dean catching up to me in a matter of seconds. “Adam and Eve _did_ eat the fruit—a Forbidden Fruit, the one thing God kept from humans. But God didn’t expel Adam and Eve from the garden. Instead, he imprisoned them inside for all eternity and hid the garden away in the a pocket universe—a dumping ground of sorts.”

A branch cracked in the distance, and Dean held his knife up, but nothing came. I cleared my throat and continued, “As a new human race grew and flourished on Earth, Adam and Eve had children, but they were not human. One grew fangs and thirsted for human blood; another had the ability to take on any appearance he wanted. The children of Eve: the first monsters.”

Dean had stopped walking, and I paused a few paces ahead of him. “Are you all right, Dean?” I asked. A soul had never been rescued from Hell before; maybe there were side effects.

Dean grunted. “Yeah, I’m fine.” He continued forward, the shadows obscuring his face, and after a moment of hesitation, I followed him. “So the monsters, they escaped onto Earth?” he said.

I checked around us once again. Anything could have been hiding in the shadows, waiting for us to let our guard down before pouncing. A monster, or something worse. “Yes. Eve managed to open a crack in Purgatory, letting all of her children out onto Earth, but before she could follow them, Adam, fearing God’s wrath, pulled her back. Purgatory sealed again, and in anger, Eve killed Adam.”

“Looks like _someone_ knows his history.”

Dean and I spun at the same time, Dean raising his knife and moving to stand slightly in front of me. _Protecting me_. My heart thudded in my chest.

A dark figure melted out of the shadows, approaching the two of us with slow steps. “Of course, you forgot one part.” A girl’s voice—and then she was close enough that I could make out a delicate face and long-fingered hands, clasped in front of her innocently. Beside me, I saw Dean begin to relax, but then she smiled, revealing rows and rows of sharp teeth. “She fed him to _us_.”

The knife flew out of Dean’s hand, embedding itself up to the hilt in her chest. With mild surprise, she glanced down at the blade, and then she grasped the hilt and pulled the it out of her heart, letting it drop to the ground in front of her. “Sorry,” she said with a small shrug. “We’re a lot harder to kill than that.”

Then, her mouth opened, jaws stretching wider and wider until all that could be seen was a massive black cavern where her face had been, ringed with wickedly sharp teeth. A forked tongue darted out, licking over the edges of her mouth, and the sound that came out—a mix between a hiss and a roar—set my teeth on edge.

“Leviathan,” I hissed, grabbing Dean’s arm and pulling him away. “Run!”

* * *

 

I wake in the middle of the night, heart pounding, sheets tangled around my legs, my forehead glistening with sweat. Dean’s name hovers on my tongue, and I press my fingers to my lips, letting the word hiss out between them. “Dean…”

The clock reads 3:47 AM, but sleep is the last thing on my mind. I swing my legs over the side of the bed, feeling the scratchy carpet rub against the bare soles of my feet, and stand, crossing the motel room to the safe stationed next to the door.

The lock requires a 5-number password, and my hands shake slightly as I press the correct buttons. _1-2-4-7-9_. January 24, 1979—a date I had committed to memory before I even realized the significance of it.

With a rush of air, the safe door swings open, and I pull out the small metal box that sits inside. Feeling its smooth surface beneath my fingers, my knees go weak, and I slide down the wall to the ground, cradling the box in my trembling hands. Then, I pop the top and pull out the photographs that lie within.

Tears fill my eyes as I flip past picture after picture: Dean and Sam, grinning stupidly at the camera; Dean’s ‘blue steel’, his lips curling slightly; the photo of Jo, Ellen, Bobby, Dean, Sam, and I, right before we lost Jo and I watched Dean fall apart and pull himself together almost simultaneously.

And then, at the bottom, the photographs of Dean and I—the ones nobody else, not even Dean himself, have seen, taken with a crappy disposable camera Dean stole from a convenience store. The moments Dean can’t remember.

Us holding hands. Dean with his head back, laughing at something I said. His hands grabbing the front of my leather jacket to pull me in for a chaste kiss. The tears come free, running down my cheeks in rivulets, and I hold the photos away from my body so they don’t get wet. “I love you,” I choke, the photos fluttering out of my fingers and landing haphazardly on the ground around my feet. I press my knuckles to my lips, my body shaking with sobs. “I _love_ you, Dean Winchester.”

Another version of me, the one with strawberry-blonde hair and acid-wash skinny jeans, whispers the words also, but while his meet receptive ears, mine ricochet off of the motel walls with nobody to witness them but me. I close my eyes and let the tears leak out between my eyelids, hugging my knees to my chest and letting the past carry me back into the depths of sleep, where the pain can’t follow.


	5. Benny

“We can’t outrun it,” Dean gasped, dodging hanging branches and vaulting over logs expertly. Behind us, the rapid footsteps of the Leviathan kept steady pace with us, but Dean was right; she could maintain her pace far longer than us, especially me. Humans grew tired so easily; the only advantage I had was the excellent physique of the body I’d inhabited. But even that could only last so long; my legs were already beginning to drag, setting me a step or two behind Dean. Blood rushed to my head in rapid droves, setting my vision spinning and my lungs burning as they struggled to bring in enough oxygen to sustain me. I felt myself draining impossibly fast, desperation washing over me and driving my legs to keep pumping, my breath to keep wheezing out between my lips, my arms to swing broadly at my aching sides; in turn, my mind slowly succumbed to the effort, draining away all sense of reason and making my whole world nothing but movement and raw adrenaline.

And Dean, dropping his pace slightly to stay at my side despite the fact that the Leviathan was drawing ever-closer and I was faltering, my feet tripping, my chest heaving, my vision blackening around the edges. How long had we been running? It could have been minutes or hours—to me, reality stretched and pulled until everything was white noise and blurred images, only cut by Dean’s words and the slap of his feet on pine needles.

“Cas, we have to stop.”

I registered his words, but my lips refused to move to answer him. Even if they had, could I have had the stability of mind to even utter a response? I managed to glance over at him, meeting his green eyes with my own, and I saw my desperation mirrored in him.

Then, my legs collapsed, my muscles failing to obey the screaming commands of my brain and simply folding, sending me tumbling to the ground. I slid a few feet on the loose pine needles before rucking up at the base of a wide pine tree, the abrupt lack of motion setting my head spinning. Through the ringing in my ears, I heard Dean skid to a halt as well, yelling my name frantically, and I tried to tell him to _go_ , but the only thing that came out was a groan. Maybe I’d hit my head—

“Castiel.” Then, the Leviathan loomed over me, her mouth curled into a shark-toothed grin. She reached down and hoisted me up by my hair, sending spikes of pain through my scalp; a low groan escaped my lips, but suddenly, I just felt tired. First, I would succumb to the Leviathan’s teeth; then, Dean would. Something deep inside of me screamed _no_ , demanded that I fight—if not for myself, then for him—but its cries suffocated under my heavy exhaustion. “One of God’s prized angels.” She spat my father’s name like poison, throwing it back in my face violently. Then, she squinted at me, her eyes flicking back and forth across my face as if searching for something. “Well, not anymore.”

Her face split in two, taken over by long, pointed teeth and the pitch-black cavern of her throat; a throaty growl ripped its way from the depths of her esophagus, an equally as powerful cry ringing out behind her as she lowered her mouth—

I wasn’t aware I’d closed my eyes until they flew open again to hands shaking my shoulders and a hoarse voice saying my name frantically. Dean’s worried face swam into focus, his green eyes impossibly wide—large enough to swallow me whole.

I sat up suddenly, nearly knocking my forehead against Dean’s in the process, and rubbed the back of my hand against my face. It came away a dark, sticky black. Ignoring Dean’s concerned inquiries of whether or not I was okay, I glanced to the side, where a rather bloody, headless Leviathan lay sprawled at the foot of a tree, inky liquid oozing out from its open neck.

“You two. Get up; beheading that thing’s only going to slow it down.”

Both Dean and I turned toward the speaker. He towered over us, making the bloodstained machete in his right hand and the Leviathan’s head, gripped by its curly blonde hair, in his left seem all the more threatening. Rough stubble curled around his chin, running into short-clipped hair at his ears, and his blue eyes studying the two of us with mild impatience. “Besides, you’ve made enough noise to attract an entire horde of monsters. You’re lucky it’s just me.”

Dean, ever the hunter, rose carefully to his feet, adopting a cautious—almost defensive—stance. “Who are you?” I stood as well, my head spinning; I placed a shaky hand against a nearby tree to keep my balance.

The man wiped his machete off on the bottom of his tattered shirt in two swift strokes before sliding it into a homemade sheath at his side. He regarded the Leviathan head for a brief moment before whipping it far off into the trees; it spun quickly out of sight. “My name’s Benny. Now, come on—we have to move.”

Dean didn’t budge, narrowing his eyes at Benny. “ _What_ are you?”

Benny, halfway past Dean, paused just long enough to send Dean a sharp-toothed grin. “I should be asking _you_ that question. Instead, I’m saving you and your angel friend.”

“Why?” I finally regained the ability to function correctly, pushing myself off of the tree and moving to stand at Dean’s side. “What’s in it for you?”

Benny shrugged. “Nothing. Leviathans are dicks.” Something in the way his eyes moved almost unconsciously to Dean, though, made my own eyes narrow slightly. “However, they are also _extremely_ dangerous, so I suggest we get as far away from here as possible.”

Dean cast his eyes toward me, questioning; not until later did I realize the significance of headstrong Dean asking for permission to do something. At the time, I simply nodded, and we followed Benny into the

* * *

 

Three sharp knocks at my motel door jerk me roughly out of the past, and my pencil skids sharply across the notebook paper, effectively marring the page. With a muttered curse, I reluctantly push back my chair and cross the room with quick strides, peering through the peephole.

I reel backwards, stunned, and then after a moment’s hesitation, open the door just wide enough that a sliver of Sam’s face comes into focus. “Hello, Sam,” I mumble. “Now’s not really a good time—“

Sam ignores my protest, wedging his foot between the door and the frame before I can close the space and pushing his way forcefully into my motel room. My heart in my throat, I push the door shut behind me with a click; in the next moment, Sam speaks.

“It’s been three months, Cas.”

I drop my gaze to the floor, studying the faded floral-print carpet intently. “I know.“

“You never called.”

“I know—“

“What the hell, man?” Sam swallows sharply, his eyes flickering with muted irritation. “You said you needed space, but this—“ He gestures to the motel room. “—this is you hiding from your problems.”

I’m painfully aware of the notebook, lying open on the desk; I try not to draw attention to it, instead bringing myself to meet Sam’s demanding eyes. “I’m not hiding.”

Sam’s jaw twitches. “You spent a fair amount of time covering your tracks for someone who’s just taking some time off.”

I can’t come up with a viable excuse, so I look away again. Guilt floods over me—that I can’t even tell Sam, the only one who might understand, the reason I tried so hard to hide myself from him, and that how that he’s here I can’t even look him in the eye.

Sam blows hot air out of his nose, and the next time he speaks, his tone is softer, more forgiving. “I’m just worried about you, Cas. After Dean…”

A red-hot jolt of pain spikes through me at the mention of his name, and my eyes close tightly. I’m glad Sam doesn’t finish his sentence; I don’t think I could handle it if the words were spoken aloud, if I had to face again the circumstances that tore Dean out of our hands and sent him spinning out of reach. Sam must see the distress painted on my face, because he sighs heavily. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

With effort, I tear my eyes open and finally meet Sam’s gaze, relieved to see kindness sparkling in his eyes. “It’s not your fault.”

We both know the double meaning behind this statement, and Sam’s kindness quickly transitions to a mixture of worry and horror. “Cas—“

“I apologize, Sam, but I just need some more time.” I don’t want to hear Sam’s fussing, don’t want to accept his endless kindness, and the best way I can think to save him the trouble is to release him from my influence for as long as possible.

Sam swallows. “Okay.” He puts a hand on my shoulder, giving it a tight squeeze before releasing it and stepping back. “But you have to answer when I call.”

“I will,” I lie.

Sam nods, and then takes one last look around my motel room. I stiffen; his eyes pass over the notebook, travel a few feet to the left, and then snap back to the desk. One of the notebook pages is sticking stiffly into the air, scrawled words filling it halfway, and terror seizes me with icy claws. Before I can think rationally, I’m sliding around to block the path of Sam’s sight, placing myself between him and the notebook.

Sam’s eyes narrow slightly; blood rushes hotly in my ears, almost drowning out his next words. “What’s that?”

I shift slightly. “What’s what?”

Sam doesn’t buy it. “I’m tired of secrets, Cas.” He tries to slide past me, but I step in time with him, blocking his path almost instinctively. I don’t want to hurt Sam; I don’t want to keep secrets from him; I just can’t help protecting the notebook with my life, like a patriarchal instinct buried deep within me. I don’t know if Sam can see this helplessness within me, but if he does, he ignores it, remaining hell-bent on discovering my secret. I suppose years of lies and deceit have soiled the idea of privacy for Sam forever.

“I can’t,” I manage, trying to communicate my desperation to Sam. Having Sam read the notebook… it would feel like baring my soul to him.

It would feel like betraying Dean.

“Stop!”

Sam halts mid-step, his eyes wide as I forcefully take him by the shoulders and push him against the wall, making the picture frames hanging there tremble and knock against the fraying wallpaper. My forearm goes across Sam’s throat, not tight enough to choke him but sturdy enough to keep him in place. Desperation morphs quickly and violently into hot fury, wiping my mind blank and giving my words a biting edge. “Leave,” I growl, bring my face within inches of Sam’s. His eyes stare back into mine, pupils blown wide with surprise. “That notebook is of no concern to you. I do not wish to share it with you.”

“Okay,” Sam says quickly, surprise transitioning to hurt and a tint of fear. I can’t blame him; it’s been so long since I’ve spoken this way, I feel a spark of fear myself. It’s enough to shake me out of my blind rage, and I release Sam from the wall. He brushes his hands down the front of his shirt, then through his hair once. “Okay. I’m sorry.”

There it is again: guilt. My shoulders slump under the weight of it, the last of my fury leaking out and leaving me painfully empty. “No. I’m sorry. I… I overreacted.”

Sam smiles then, and I marvel at his ability to show kindness even when faced with a raging storm of negative emotions such as my own. “Take care of yourself.” He turns and crosses the room in a few strides, opening the door and stepping out into the dank hallway.

My heart thuds. “Sam—“

The door closes, and I slump, staring at the whitewashed wood for minutes after Sam’s departure. Perhaps I feel angry. Perhaps I feel disappointed, or regretful, or even relieved.

All I register is guilt.

I carry this guilt with me back to the desk, staring at the dark line cutting through the most recent page for a moment before drawing a careful horizontal line under the current words instead of going through the painstaking trouble of erasing and rewriting everything. Besides, my, Dean, and Benny’s journey through Purgatory can be summarized within a paragraph, and the guilt weighing heavily on my mind makes me unbelievable exhausted. My words come out wobbly, but I don’t mind; after all, the only person I would ever have read them is gone.

I bite my lip, forcing that thought to the back of my mind, and submerge myself in the words.

* * *

 

“Stay away from Eden,” Benny warned, his eyes flashing. “I don’t know much about Hell, but the garden… it may as well be the real thing.”

“Been there, done that, got the T-shirt,” Dean said with a smirk that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Unfortunately, we don’t have a choice. If we don’t do this, Cas will die.”

Benny squinted at me; I desperately hoped that his knowledge of angels was limited, at least to the point where he wouldn’t notice that angels didn’t need sustenance. “If you go there, you both will die. Better that one of you make it than neither.”

“I’m not leaving Cas to die!” Dean’s eyes flashed with fiery determination, and I felt something in my stomach clench painfully. “So do you know how to get to the garden or not?”

Benny looked over his shoulder, and instinctively Dean and I did the same. For the past couple of days, the three of us had been fighting our way deeper and deeper into Purgatory, cutting down more monsters than I cared to count and growing all the more weary because of it. Dark shadows marred the skin below Dean’s emerald eyes, his normal intensity dulled by exhaustion and the drain of operating in another dimension. As a human, I had no doubt that I looked far, far worse, but Dean didn’t comment on it, only making sure to back me up during monster encounters with a short knife he’d crafted from a sharp stone he’d found. I’d never faced death more in my existence than I did during those long days in Purgatory, and the prospect of humanity bittered for me with every passing moment. How could humans live every waking moment a mere misfortune away from death?

“Yeah, I know how to get there,” Benny relented, turning back to us, apparently satisfied that, for now, we were alone. “But if I’m going to take you to that ungodly hellhole, you’re going to have to do something for _me._ ”

Dean’s eyes flicked to me, and I gave him a small shrug. It wasn’t like we had a choice in the matter. “And what might that be?” Dean asked, shifting his weight—an unconscious defensive maneuver. Whatever Benny was planning on requesting, both of us knew it wasn’t going to be trivial—not with the way Benny stared us down, questioning and challenging at the same time.

“Get me out of here.”

Dean let out a short, clipped laugh. “I’m not sure that’s how it works—“

“Okay.” I stepped forward and extended my hand to Benny, as that was what I had observed humans doing as a way to agree upon something.

Benny smiled, exposing the very tips of his fangs jutting out from his gums, and clasped my hand firmly, shaking it once. “I guess we both got lucky.”

Dean stared at our clasped hands with a dumbfounded expression that quickly morphed to anger. “Hey, wait just a second—“

“Dean.”

Dean’s protest died on his lips as I turned, releasing Benny’s hand, and locked eyes with him. Something happened then; looking back on it, I suppose it was the first of many moments when I felt as if there were something between the two of us, something not quite tangible yet utterly unbreakable. It felt like high-powered energy, crackling through my veins and sending a sharp tingling feeling through my entire being; looking into Dean’s eyes, the way they widened almost imperceptibly, pupils blowing slightly larger, I knew he felt it too. Maybe he knew what it meant more than I did, because he was the first to break the connection, shifting the position of his stone knife on his belt and clearing his throat. “Let’s just get the hell out of here,” he mumbled, turning his gaze to Benny. “How long until we reach the garden?”

“As quickly as you’d like.” At Dean’s confused expression, Benny continued, “Purgatory is endless—even if you walked in the same direction for years, you’d never reach the edge. Trying to find its center would be like trying to find the center of the Earth’s universe.”

My brow furrowed. “Actually—“

“It’s an analogy, angel boy,” Benny snapped, cutting me off.

“So does the garden exist or not?” Dean asked, his words clipped and tense.

Benny sighed. “Yes. But getting there is a bitch.”

Dean and I traded another glance; this time, electricity coursed only briefly before Dean’s eyes snapped back to Benny. “How?”

Benny’s eyes flickered to me only briefly before he spoke. “Human blood.”


	6. Human

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for the long wait. I have excuses but I'm sure you'd much rather just read the chapter :)

My finger hovers over the “call” button of my cell phone, Sam’s name and number waiting patiently on the screen. The light from the phone faintly illuminates the motel room, piercing weakly through the descending twilight leaking in through the window; it burns the image of Sam’s name into my corneas, even after I sigh, shut down the phone, and toss it carelessly onto the rumpled bed sheets.

I shouldn’t leave Sam like this, with our last meeting hanging between us like an iron curtain, but what could I say that could possibly explain to Sam the importance of the notebook? Nothing short of telling Sam about Dean and me.

Something tickling the back of my mind chides that he probably already knows—or, at the very least, has hazarded a guess—but that part of me is suffocated under the fear and protectiveness of my past. Really, the only one I trust to venture even a couple of years prior to the time of the Winchesters is Dean.

Was Dean.

My mind automatically switches the verb to the past tense, causing a painful throb in my chest. Swallowing, I sit at my desk, pencil in hand, and stare at the notebook paper blankly.

How could I have just ignored everything? I knew, the entire time the Winchesters were battling the apocalypse—and even a bit after the fact—which punches were coming next, _knew_ the horrors the Winchesters had yet to face that they hadn’t even _imagined_ yet, but I said nothing, simply watched as their world disintegrated. I sat and watched after the apocalypse as Dean struggled with Sam’s loss, and it hurt too much to bear, so I did what I swore I’d never do again; I went to Hell for a Winchester.

The laugh that this thought elicits from me rings dry and pained in my ears, and I choke on it, pounding my fist against the wall and closing my eyes tightly. How poetic: an angel of the Lord, descending to the very depths of Hell for a human.

No. Not just a human. Dean Winchester.

Was it only for him? Everything I did after dragging Dean from the fiery clutches of Hell—every decision I made, every piece of information I withheld out of fear, every life I saved—did I only do it for him?

I’m not sure if I want to consider the possibility. If everything I ever did after Dean rose from Hell was in his name, then how can I explain the immense pain I put Dean through, time and time again?

How can I explain the present?

My fist leaves the wall and presses to my lips, my teeth knocking gently against my white knuckles and scraping against the tightly stretched skin there. _No._ My eyes begin to water, like a turbulent river knocking against a rotting dam, waiting for just the right amount of pressure to snap the wood in two and unleash the torrent lying in wait. _Enough crying._ The river refuses to subside, lapping eagerly against its confinements. _Stop._ I bite my lip, feeling dull pain ricochet outward from the point of contact, and slam my fist against the wall again—this time hard enough that the pictures hanging there shake and knock against the wallpaper, settling slightly askew. _ENOUGH!_

Feeling frustration claw its way up from the depths of my stomach, I push away from the wall and take quick strides across the room, snatching my pencil from my desk and sitting straight-backed over my notebook. Without clear thought or direction, I crush the tip of my pencil into the paper so violently it almost rips and write something—anything.

Anything to escape from the present.

* * *

 

Silence. Or, at least, I assumed that silence fell over the three of us. I couldn’t tell over the loud pumping of my heart.

“Right. Okay,” Dean said finally, clearing his throat and taking a step towards Benny, left arm extended and right hand already reaching for his knife. “How much?”

                  Benny reached forward with an impatient sigh and knocked the knife away from where Dean had begun to raise it to his arm. “Sorry, mate, but it’s not your blood we need.” Then, he glanced over at me, our eyes meeting for a fraction of a second before I looked away, incapable of maintaining the eye contact. “It’s his.”

Dean’s arm dropped to his side, and he let out a short burst of air halfway between a laugh and a gasp. “I’m sorry, what? First you said that we needed human blood, and now you’re telling me that we need an angel’s?”

Benny paused a moment. Then, it was his turn to laugh, a low, clipped chuckle that emanated from the depths of his being. “You don’t know. You didn’t tell him?” The last part, directed at me, made my stomach twist uncomfortably; I kept my eyes trained on the ground despite feeling Dean’s curious gaze turn my way. “Let’s keep moving. You two can have a little chat on the way to the entrance.”

Benny slid into the shadows of the trees, knife swinging at his side leisurely, and after a moment’s pause, Dean and I followed him, tension crackling in the air like flashes of lightning before the storm.

We were about 10 paces further when Dean finally spoke. “Cas, what the hell is going on here?”

Oh, how many times had I heard those words coming from Dean’s mouth, each time becoming all the more weary as secret after secret after betrayal after betrayal piled one on top of another like a tower of cards, precariously balanced and on the brink of collapse. This time, though, our feet alighting on pine needles and the shadows mocking us with every step, all I heard from Dean was confusion and the slightest hint of hurt—like he’d somehow expected a higher degree of trust between us.

To this day, I still don’t know why he trusted me so much. I wouldn’t have.

At the time, however, I, too, stood unmarked by years of tumultuous events that would shake my existence more than ever before, so I simply swallowed and muttered, “It’s nothing to be concerned about.” A complete lie—I could feel the hunger ravaging my entire body, demanding nutrients that didn’t exist, making my steps heavy and my vision foggy. I felt hollow, like someone had taken a spoon and scooped out my insides, leaving behind only frail bones and sagging skin. I’d stood to witness eons of generations of humans, many of them starving where they stood, begging for food and water to no avail, but I’d never understood their desperation—a desperation that drove them to kill, to betray, to lose themselves completely for something as materialistic as sustenance.

Now, of course, I could understand.

“Please don’t lie to me,” Dean growled, snapping me out of my thoughts. “I may not understand anything about angels or Heaven or Purgatory, but I do understand that you’re my only shot at getting out of here alive, so therefore, I have to trust you. And in order for me to trust you, you’ve gotta trust me, okay?” A branch snapped, close, and Dean’s hand went automatically to his belt, his eyes wide like a feral animal’s and scanning the shadows feverishly. After ten seconds had passed and nothing had come screaming out of the trees, Dean relaxed slightly, his hand still remaining on the handle of his knife, and continued, “We’re all we’ve got right now, Cas. That means something to me, and it should to you, too.”

I took in a long breath, feeling the air filter slowly through my lungs and fill them to the maximum capacity, and then let it out just as carefully. “There are… circumstances, in which an angel may lose all of their grace. It has not happened often, certainly not recently, but it is possible.”

Dean cocked an eyebrow. “Okay?”

“When this happens, an angel loses what you can consider their ‘soul’—the part of them that provides them with power, immortality, and divinity. Once that part is lost, an angel ceases to exist.”

Dean’s forehead creased, his eyes narrowing slightly in confusion. “But you lost your grace, and you’re still here.”

“Yes.” I glanced at the ground again, as if my feet needed assistance finding the correct places to plant themselves. “The angel ceases to exist, and they leave in their place a human.”

Dean said nothing, so without looking up, I continued, “Angels by creation cannot feel emotions, or taste food, or even witness humans’ true faces. We were created as soldiers of God, and so we exist to follow orders, not to create and experience creation as humans do. So when an angel falls and loses their grace, they experience all of these things for the first time. Terror, pain, weariness, hunger—“

“So you’re not an angel anymore?” Dean said suddenly, cutting me off mid-sentence. I couldn’t read his voice; to me, it sounded flat and devoid of emotion. Of course, I hadn’t had the time yet to learn every one of Dean’s quirks and subtleties, but even without emotional connotation I could still sense that something inside Dean was building.

“No.” And there it was: the truth, spilled into the world for me to face head-on. Suddenly, it seemed so ridiculous—that saying something aloud would make it hurt more, make it more real. It just served as a reminder.

Finally, I glanced over at Dean, if simply because I needed to see his face, needed to see how he’d reacted. His jaw twitched, the muscles in his cheeks jumping, and I lowered my gaze slightly to see his hands clenched in white-knuckled fists at his sides. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner, Cas?” he demanded tightly, his tone hard and unyielding. “Secrets, they… I hate secrets.”

But how could he, seeing that he kept so many himself? I banished this thought—this wasn’t Dean’s fault, this was mine—and replied, “I felt that you would no longer trust me as a human. I… I was scared.” I surprised even myself at this admittance. For years—millennium—I confided in no one. Many angels younger than me found bonding partners or formed friendships of sorts, but I’d never felt the need. After a few centuries, the offers came fewer and fewer until they ceased all together, and I continued on as if nothing had changed, running my garrison alone and watching generation after generation of humans walk the earth without even the semblance of desire, wavering resolve, or empathy for the various hardships I witnessed. And now, after barely a week of being human, I was sharing my emotions—which I barely understood myself yet—with this man?

Dean must have been surprised as well because he paused for a moment before sighing and relaxing his hands. “Okay,” he said, rubbing a thumb over the hilt of his knife absentmindedly. “Just… no more secrets, Cas. We have enough crap to deal with as it is.”

I nodded, feeling a wave of guilt twist my stomach even as I assented to Dean’s request. The biggest secret of all—Dean’s fate—still lay under wraps, and despite the ever-growing voice in the back of my mind nagging me to tell him, I feared the consequences too greatly.  Besides, I still remained loyal to Heaven, God, and the angels higher up than me, and that commitment reigned above my rapidly growing fondness for Dean—for that’s what it was, looking back, though I didn’t know it at the time.

How quickly that loyalty came crumbling down.

“You boys done sorting things out?” Benny called over his shoulder, ducking underneath a low-hanging tree and pushing some stray branches out of the way with his machete. Without waiting for an answer, he continued, “We’re here.”

Dean and I glanced at each other, candy-apple green meeting rich brown, before slipping through the tangled trees behind Benny and emerging on the banks of a trickling creek. Smooth stones peppered the ground beneath our feet, leading up to the water’s edge and disappearing under the rippling waves. Without even thinking, I lurched forward and knelt at the water’s edge, cupping my hands in the icy-cold current and bringing a scoop of water to my mouth with a sigh. The water tasted fresh and clean and blessedly sweet on my tongue— _taste_ , for the first time, like a tiny bit of Heaven had fallen and encompassed my mouth—and I took handful after handful of river water, letting the iciness sooth my throat and quench a portion of my gnawing hunger.

After a minute or two, I sat back on my heels and let my hands simply sit in the creek, feeling the water rush over my hands like a gentle breeze and hearing it quietly chatter against loose rocks. I could sense Dean and Benny standing side-by-side behind me, neither of them saying a word as I felt the stress of Hell and Purgatory drain through my fingertips and be swept away down the creek.

Finally, Benny broke the quiet. “This creek cuts through all of Purgatory. It serves as a tear in the fabric between this place and the Garden; rumor has it that the creek also runs through Eden, but since no one’s ever been there, that could be crap.” I heard the slick of a knife rubbing against a sheath, and I stood and turned to see Benny holding Dean’s knife in his hand, extended hilt-out to me. “Just add blood, and the creek turns into an entrance. Across the palm should do.”

I took the knife in my hand, briefly testing its weight; it balanced considerably worse than an angel blade, but then again, so did every man-made weapon. Then, quickly, I closed my left hand around the sharp edge of the blade and slid the knife quickly and cleanly across my palm.

I’d cut myself many times in the past, broken the bones of various vessels, and suffered various other ailments, but always without feeling, like the action inflicted was on another entirely and I simply watched, disinterested, from the sidelines. So the pain that spiked through my nervous system and seized my hand with clawed fingers seemed monumental, eliciting a strangled gasp from my lips that quickly cut off as my mouth pressed tightly shut, jaw clenched with effort. Stiffly, I moved my dripping palm over the creek and watched mutely as the drops of scarlet appeared and vanished in the rushing water almost simultaneously. For a moment, nothing happened; the only noise was the babbling of the creek, the only motion the dripping of my blood and the rushing water, Dean and Benny apprehensive at my side.

Then, as if suddenly realizing the presence of the blood, the water flushed a dark crimson and immediately stilled, its surface smooth and reflective of the hazy sunlight. I tucked my palm back close to me, pressing the injury against my shirt in an effort to halt the bleeding, and glanced over at Dean. He was staring intently at the water, but just as I brought my eyes to him he looked over at me, green eyes questioning. “I take it we have to walk into that?”

Benny chuckled. “Believe me, there are worse fates.”

“Not where we’re going,” I said, and Benny’s laughter died on his lips.

“I’ll be here when you two get back, then,” he said, his tone more serious now. “Don’t forget your promise.”

I nodded at Benny, and then, with another glance at Dean, I stepped into the creek.

My foot met only water, and I barely had time to register surprise—to register my shocked look mirrored on Dean’s face—before the river swallowed us whole.


	7. The Garden of Eden

Angels had spoken reverently of the Garden despite the darkness that lay within it. They described dense, unearthly green vegetation and a sky so blue it almost rippled and shimmered; the fruit, they whispered, grew year-round and tasted of purity—though as creatures with no sensation of taste, I couldn’t attest to their credibility. In fact, the only word of the Garden was passed down through the ranks, told as children’s stories to the younger ones; the validity of the tale, therefore, was mediocre at best. Which one of us angels could really claim that the orders passed down from God were 100 percent accurate and untainted by higher-ups? Not that any one of us would have protested or dared to disobey—at least, not back then.

However, as I lay on my back, coughing out blood-red water and trying to regain some sort of breathing abilities, I felt… something, like a warm feeling spreading through me and filling my veins and arteries. Now, I know it was peace and tranquility, something I’ve found scarcely—if at all—but all I knew at that time was that I just wanted to lie there on the ground and sleep, sleep for weeks on end.

Sleep forever.

“Cas. Cas, man, get up. Cas!”

I barely heard Dean’s voice through the lull in my mind, nor felt his hands shake my shoulders roughly. My entire being sank deeper and deeper into peaceful content, like sinking slowly through warm water, and my breathing slowed, pulling me down and down—

“God dammit, Cas,” Dean growled, and then a searing pain shot through my nose, vibrating down to the base of my skull and ripping me from my trance. I sat up quickly, bringing both hands to my face and tenderly fingering my nose; when I pulled my hands away, bright red rivulets decorated my fingers and palms.

“You… you punched me,” I realized, cocking my head at Dean.

Dean looked exasperated. “Yeah, because you were going all comatose on me.” He paused a moment, then carefully took both sides of my face in his hands and turned my head from side to side, squinting at my nose. “It’s not broken; you’ll live.” He released my face and stood, offering me a hand; I glanced at my right hand, wiped the blood off on my shirt, and grasped Dean’s hand with mine, staggering to my feet. Blinking away the lingering calm, I wiped a large amount of blood from under my nose—it _stung_ ; humans have no idea the amount of tolerance they have for pain—and let my eyes adjust.

Where Purgatory was a collection of foggy grays and earth tones, the Garden was every color on the visible spectrum, exploding in an array of blues and greens, reds and purples, oranges and yellows, and everything in between. Picture the most beautiful place you can think of; now, magnify that image by twenty. That gives a general idea of the etherealness, of the absolute _perfection_ , of the Garden of Eden.

Dean opened his mouth and then closed it, his eyes flicking back and forth as if hoping that the fifth or so take would yield a different sight. “Wait,” he said finally, pointing an accusing finger at a nearby tree; its blossoms fluttered slightly in the gentle breeze sweeping through the Garden, bringing with it the scent of honey blossoms and lavender. “This- this is Eden? As in the big, scary, full-of-evil Garden that contains the mother of all the creepy sons-of-bitches I’ve ever hunted?”

I took another look around, perhaps like Dean—just to make sure this world wasn’t going to melt away in front of us in lieu of horrors neither of us could even imagine. “Yes,” I concluded. I guess the stories had been more than just children’s tales.

Dean blew out a long breath, taking a few steps forward. “Wow. I’ve seen some freaky stuff before, but this?” He turned towards me, shaking his head. “This is just weird. I mean, even for me, weird.”

I turned and squinted at Dean, confusion painting my features. “My brothers and sisters had spoken of the beauty of Eden. Truthfully, the only odd thing about this situation is that we are still alive.”

Now Dean looked perplexed. “I’m sorry, but have you looked _around us?_ Cas, this is the most non-threatening place I’ve ever _been_ in.”

“You are wrong.” I took a step forward, feeling the plush grass sink slightly under my weight, and studied our surroundings, my entire body beginning to tense, the lingering calm finally draining away in lieu of caution. “You are just used to the monsters that thrive in the dark.”

Dean fell silent, long enough that I glanced over my shoulder at him. He had drawn his knife out of its sheath and was flipping it absently in his fingers, the blade narrowly missing his knuckles. “Okay, then what are we looking for? You’re the expert, I guess.” His tone was tense, guarded, and just a touch offended. I guess I’d scratched his pride.

My stomach clenched, reminding me of the reason we’d even attempted this foolish venture. “First, we must find sustenance,” I decided, taking quick strides in the direction of a clump of lush, green trees in the near distance. Behind me, Dean cursed and ran to catch up, his footsteps muffled by the too-perfect grass.

“Wait, wait. First, we’re lucky to be alive after just _falling_ into this place, and now we’re plunging headfirst into it?”

“I’m glad you understand.”

Dean sighed in exasperation, putting a hand on my shoulder and pulling me to a halt. “Look, can we just stop to think for a second? I need some time to comprehend _this_.” He gestured around him widely, his eyes searching mine intensely.

By then, I’d come to expect the energy that passed between us every time our eyes connected, so I barely noticed it when I said, “We don’t have _time_ , Dean. The longer we linger here, the quicker my superiors’ patience will dwindle. I can assure you, they will be much less accommodating than me.”

“Right, ‘cause you’re such a peach,” Dean muttered, following me anyway as I continued forward again, reaching the stand of trees within minutes. After that, it only took another few minutes of searching before I found one bearing fruit—plump, crimson apples, shining brightly in the warm sunlight. I reached up and plucked one from a low-hanging branch, my stomach rumbling in anticipation as I opened my mouth and had my first taste of… well, of anything.

“Purity” was one word to describe it—the way the juices filled my mouth, brushing against my tongue and bringing with them a sweetness that sent shocks of pleasure shooting through my nerves to my brain. The skin broke crisply against my teeth, unleashing the wonder inside; when my stomach growled demandingly, I took another bite, and then another, tearing at the fruit in a frantic way that I’m sure disgusted Dean.

However, when I finished and glanced over at him, wiping the back of my hand over my mouth to catch the stray juice that had dripped off the corners of my lips, I saw a vaguely amused smile coupled with eyes that laughed at me. “Wait until you taste _burgers_. They’re better than sex.”

Instead of responding, I pulled another fruit from the tree.

After my eleventh apple, the hollow emptiness in my stomach faded to a dull, bloated ache. I dropped the last apple core onto the sticky pile of them sitting haphazardly at my feet and licked my lips, savoring the sweet tang still present there. “Now, we must go.”

I stepped over the pile of apple cores and started back the way we came, but Dean put two hands on my shoulders to keep me stationary, his fingers gentle against my muscles but firm in their insistence. “How? Cas, there’s no creek. There’s nothing here to bring us back.”

I processed this quickly, pushing aside the small bit of doubt—and probably a hint of fear—that pushed its way into my mind. “We will find a river. There is a way out, otherwise monsters would not exist in your world.”

Dean stared at me with wide eyes. “Dude, how are you not _freaked?_ First with the Zen-like sleep, then the total chill over this place looking like one endless botanical garden, and now this?”

“Why are you so unsettled?” I countered. “As a hunter, you are perfectly accustomed to the unnatural. Besides, it is not in your character to express caution or trepidation.”

“You- “ Dean jabbed a finger at me, then thought better of it, retracting his hand and clenching it in a fist that he brought to his lips. “I just don’t want to die!” He paused. “Again. Can I even _die_ right now?”

“No.” I brushed past Dean, grabbing his shoulder on the way and pulling him after me. “You can only return to your position in Hell.”

Grumbling under his breath, Dean caught up to me, matching my pace as I retraced our steps through the meadow. Amid the complaints about my choice of words and Dean’s own colorful words about me, however, I caught something that made me halt and grab Dean’s arm, dragging him to a stop as well.

“Honestly, with the manhandling!” Dean exclaimed, ripping his arm from my grasp and rubbing it like a wounded animal.

“What did you say?” I asked, ignoring Dean’s complaints. My eyes bore into his intently, and I felt him shift uncomfortably under their pressure.

“It’s nothing,” he muttered, and something flashed across his face—his most familiar expression, one I, in some miracle or ghost of luck, had not encountered yet: self-hatred, masked deeply underneath a stony mask of indifference and faux strength. However, for someone who didn’t yet understand human emotions or their infinite complexities, I saw the pain clearly enough. Maybe it was what I was the most familiar with—besides the passive emotions of obedience and loyalty, of course.

The human in me that recognized the pain must also have controlled my actions at that moment, because I couldn’t quite pinpoint why I continued to pressure Dean into repeating his words, my gaze burning into him insistently until he finally spat out, “Maybe that’s where I belong, okay? Back in Hell—maybe there’s a reason I was there, and not just because I sold my soul.” Dean swallowed sharply, his jaw tensing; against the flawless backdrop of Eden, his distress seemed all the more prominent, like blood against white cloth. “I say I save people. I tell myself that every fucking day, after a hunt, to try and explain away all the casualties, the trail of bodies I leave in my wake, but…. How am I any better than the standard-grade murderer that ends up downstairs? How can I look at what I do and say that I deserve anything else than what I got?”

The words were right there. They hovered at the edges of my lips, waiting to fall into the open air and finally make Dean realize the man he was destined to be. _Fate_ brought Dean and Sam into existence, and fate destined them to be the two most important humans in history. And now Dean stood before me, broken, and told me he deserved Hell? It didn’t matter that I was too late, that Dean had already broken the first seal and started the spiraling descent into the inevitable rising of Lucifer—something I honestly hadn’t expected from him; I guess my superiors had forgotten to mention a few key details. If God said Dean was to be saved, and if Dean was the man I understood him to be, then he certainly didn’t deserve eternity in Hell.

Honestly… I’m not sure if I would have fallen so completely for Dean Winchester had I not lost my grace and gained a wealth of human emotions. Angels, they are capable of attachment, loyalty, caring, and occasionally, devotion, but love? I could feel it when I returned as an angel, my grace restored in Heaven; those emotions dulled, dimmed, like a new penny rusting. Maybe my superiors thought it was enough—that I would simply forget my attachment to Dean and become a straight-faced, blindly obedient soldier again.

Of course, everyone knows that that didn’t quite work out.

The human in me almost told him, but the angel still in control reeled the words back in at the last moment, sealing them behind a tightly-guarded wall and reluctantly handing the reins back to the human part of me. That part controlled the soft, “Everybody has things that they regret. The true measure of one’s character is whether or not they let those things control their life.”

“Thanks, Doctor Phil,” Dean grumbled, but I could see some of the tension in his muscles drain. He wasn’t convinced yet—really, he never would be—but still, something akin to calm but much warmer, more active, flooded my system.

“I am not a doctor, Dean. My name is Castiel.”

Dean sniffed, and just like that, the rest of the self-hatred drained away in lieu of muted amusement. “Yeah, Cas, I know.” He slapped my shoulder, giving me a faint smile. “Let’s go find a creek and get the hell out of Dodge.”

“Eden—“

“Cas. _I know_.”

* * *

 

The “Do Not Disturb” sign that I hung over my door handle the moment I checked into my motel room must not mean anything to the maid that comes knocking at my door around noon, shouting, “Housekeeping!” in a monotonous tone before beginning to rattle the knob.

I instinctively grab my knife from where it sits on the edge of the kitchen table—a custom blade, half-silver, half-iron, forged with salt—and hold it slightly behind me, out of sight. “Come back later,” I respond forcefully, glancing down at the rug in front of the door to ensure that it still covers the devil’s trap I have painted on the hardwood flooring in vibrant red.

The rattling halts for a moment. “This room hasn’t been cleaned in weeks,” the maid says, sounding annoyed, and the rattling continues. “I’m sorry, sir, but you’ll have to vacate for an hour or so.” She doesn’t sound even vaguely sorry, and when the door swings open and the maid pockets her master key, her eyes fall on me with near-irritation. “Good, you at least have clothing on.”

My grip on the knife doesn’t loosen until the maid passes successfully in and out of the devil’s trap; even then, I tuck the knife in the back of my rumpled dress pants and cover it with my shirt. I do a quick once-over of my room; then, satisfied that anything that could get me permanently kicked out of this room is well-hidden, I move over to the desk and gather the notebook and a handful of pencils.

I try not to snap at the maid when she idly comments that my room smells like something died in it, adding that I’ve made a massive mess and gesturing to the tall stack of plates teetering unwashed in the kitchen sink. Instead, I give her a thanks that I don’t mean and step out of my room, grabbing the keys to the Impala and my trench coat on the way. As the door swings shut, it occurs to me that she could simply push aside the rug and discover the devil’s trap; then, I decide that there’s nothing I can do about the fact now and move down the hall, entering the lobby area.

“Castiel!”

I’d almost made it out of the motel without Kristy noticing me, but now I drag myself to a halt and reluctantly turn, meeting her excited grin with a forced smile of my own. “Hello, Kristy,” I say. “I’m actually in a bit of a hurry, so—“

I make to leave again, but Kristy halts me with a quick, “I just have a question for you. Please? It’ll only take a moment.”

Every part of me is straining to _go_ , but I still turn again and fix her with a patient stare.

“Are you okay?”

The question startles me. “What?” I say, moving to face Kristy fully, some of the faux interest replaced with genuine surprise.

“Are you okay?” she repeats, concern tilting her eyebrows slightly. “You look sad.” She shakes her head and corrects, “More than sad. Heartbroken.”

My face drains of color. “I- I’m fine,” I lie, spinning quickly and pushing the lobby door open, feeling the bite of cold bring some redness back to my cheeks. I fumble with the Impala’s keys, almost dropping them before I finally unlock the driver’s side door and slide onto the familiar leather seat, my hands shaking as I close the door behind me and seal myself in the car.

_More than sad. Heartbroken._

My heart clenches tightly, as if proving the words, and I drive mindlessly, ending up at a small, dingy diner on the outskirts of town with a bacon cheeseburger and a slice of homemade cherry pie sitting on the checkered table cloth in front of me, untouched and growing steadily colder.

I can almost picture Dean, sitting next to me and eyeing my food and asking shamelessly if I’m going to finish it. His green eyes would glint when I’d push my half-eaten burger at him, and the groan of pleasure he’d make with his first bite would be worth giving up the food. Sam would roll his eyes, sticking another forkful of lettuce into his mouth and joking that if Dean didn’t slow down on the greasy food, he’d end up dying at the hands of it. Dean wouldn’t look up from his food, giving Sam the finger, which would only make Sam’s grin grow.

My stomach growls, reminding me of the reason I’m here, and I mindlessly take a bite of the cheeseburger, long-since used to the multitude of flavors that fill my mouth. The waitress brushes by, asking cheerily how I’m doing; I swallow my mouthful and tell her fine, thank you, and it feels like less of a lie than when I said the same words to Kristy, watching her face fall slightly before I lost sight of it and left.

Maybe, the longer I pretend, the more the words will begin to take hold.

Then, a flash of something catches my eye outside the diner window, and I stand quickly, the burger tumbling out of my hands and falling apart on my plate. I earn a plethora of strange glances as I dart quickly out onto the sidewalk, ignoring the protests of the waitresses as I scan the area, _sure_ that I saw him, that he stood leaning against the green metal streetlamp stationed directly across from my table in the diner.

Dean was there, watching, and now he’s not, no matter how hard I look.

I give up, retreating back to my table in the diner with hot embarrassment flushing my cheeks bright red and disappointment driving the hunger in my stomach away. Of course Dean wasn’t there, just like he couldn’t have caused that reflection in my apple a few days back. Dean is…

Dean is gone.

Before my waitress can come back and begin the inevitable concerned questioning, I slip 15 dollars underneath the edge of my pie plate and quickly exit the diner, ducking my head and avoiding the warm greetings of passersby until I reach the Impala and drive off again. The clock regretfully informs me that I still have 45 minutes before I can return to my motel room, so I drive mindlessly around town for a bit, watching the houses flash by in a blur of color. It’s a mild day, so many citizens are out walking or relaxing. I pass a small group of children playing a rough game of tackle football; one larger boy knocks a small one to the ground, yet they both laugh as they stand, grass-stained, and toss the ball across the yard.

And then, I pull up mindlessly in front of a faded green house, one with a gnarled old tree guarding the front of it, a lawn overgrown with weeds, and a rotten foreclosure sign warding it against any future residents. The Impala’s engine grinds to a halt, and I sit in the car for a moment, staring out the window at the house with an uncomfortable tightness in my chest.

An image flashes in my mind of this same house, lit up, manicured, and inhabited by a small family of four, still untainted by the horrors yet to come. Mary and John Winchester sit adjacent to one another at the kitchen table, their faces only lined with the shadows of smiles and sun; Dean and Sam sit opposite of them, Sam barely old enough to stay stationary in a high chair, Dean without the heavy responsibility of caring for his younger brother. It’s Sam’s six-month birthday, so Mary makes cupcakes and lets Sam have his first taste of sugar, smiling softly at his burble of appreciation. Dean protests loudly that they should’ve had pie, that Sammy’s going to go soft and like cake instead, but John shushes him with two cupcakes instead of one, and Dean falls into sugar-induced submission. The sun sinks below the horizon, and one by one, each Winchester retires to bed, unaware that that meal had been the last they would ever have together, oblivious to the simple perfection of the evening.

I draw in a shaking breath, dragging myself out of the past, and step out of the Impala, my notebook tucked under one arm and my trench coat hanging loosely from my shoulders. I lock the car and approach the house, feeling the tall grass swish against my calves and hearing the faint buzzing of disturbed insects, the last few of the season. When I reach the door, I find a sturdy padlock that’s easy enough to pick—yet another of the skills the Winchesters taught me during my time with them—and then I’m standing inside Sam and Dean’s childhood home, breathing in the musty air and feeling the wooden floorboards creak and shift under my weight.

It should feel wrong, being in the Winchester’s old home without their permission, but I only feel a strong sense of loss and painful regret. They could’ve lived normal lives in this house, attending the same school year-round and learning to play instruments and sports instead of how to disassemble guns and throw effective punches. The only IDs they would’ve had would have been state-issue driver’s licenses, proudly displaying their real names instead of half-assed rock aliases, and they would have made solid, long-lasting relationships instead of fleeing one-night stands in various backstreet towns.

Of course, I’m just kidding myself. I’d proved to Dean many times that no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t change the past, that he and Sam would always end up where they did. I could see the pain in his eyes when I dragged him back to the 21st century, how he couldn’t understand how his mother had still sealed her fate despite all of his best efforts; I don’t think he ever truly believed that her death was unavoidable, even as he accepted it as unchangeable.

Then, the Apocalypse fell through, and my conception of “fate” frayed until I, too, didn’t know how much of reality was truly set in stone.

I hear the stairs groan under me as I ascend to the second floor, taking a quick glance into the room that used to be Sam’s nursery as I pass it. There’s no sign a fire ever originated in here; the walls and ceiling, despite sporting peeling paint and being starkly bare, are unmarred and solid. I move on, passing the master bedroom and ending up in Dean’s old bedroom, now just an empty box with nothing but bright sunlight and suspended dust particles filling it.

I sit against a wall opposite the window, opening my notebook and balancing it on my knees. Something about this place feels safe, and my mind is as calm and quiet as it’s been in weeks. I harness this tranquility and let it bleed into my writing, the soft scratching of pencil against paper filling the room and sending me gently into the past.


End file.
